Newt’s Coup de Grace

It is beginning to look likely that Cain will soon bow out of the race. There are only so many lies a man can tell in public, and his previous lies keep requiring him to tell more. Only Palin gets away with that kind of thing. Currently, Cain is at 15 percent. Give much of that to Gingrich – as has been happening so far – and Newt becomes the immediate front-runner, with support in the 40 percent range to Romney's ceiling of 25. That changes the whole dynamic.

There are 13 places PPP has polled the Republican race in October or November where it also did a poll sometime between January and March. In those places Romney's net favorability has dropped by an average of 15 points over the course of the year.

On average Romney's favorability with primary voters was 54/25 in these 13 places at the begininng of the year. Now it's only 50/35. His problem is partially that his positives have gone down but more than that it's that as his name recognition has increased, most folks moving off the fence have gone into the negative column.

I felt the wind behind Romney disappear in the last debate, and re-emerge behind Gingrich. Now Newt gets the Cain Bounce. And Romney may drift lower. No one likes him. And the more they see him, the less they love.